Re: Education (was RPG Trivia)

["L. S. Russell" <leslier@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have a question.  Do you all feel that, on the average, programmers
coming out of college are lees knowledgeable about the profession than
those say 10 or 20 years ago?  

Rob Dixon wrote:
> 
> Jeff
> 
> > Do you know the name of the person who invented RPG - a woman in the US Navy
> > in 1964 I believe.
> 
> At the risk of showing my age, I can tell you that the very last computer 
>course
> that I attended was in 1965 and this was for RPG on an IBM 1440 - i.e. before
> system /360.  Since the 1440 had been around for a little while then, I 
>imagine
> that RPG had also.   I always assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that it was an IBM
> language.  For those that don't know, the acronym was for Report Program
> Generator.  It was for batch use only, and was intended to be easy to learn 
>for
> those used to wiring plug boards on IBM punched card machines, such as IBM 421
> tabulator, 609 summary punch etc..  I had already done a course on wiring 
>those -
> you didn't get bugs, you got "back circuits".  Although it was batch only, you
> could do create some quite sophisticated programs with it and sometime these 
>were
> quite large - even as much as 64k on a /360 !!  Programs were much smaller 
>then.
> 
> Grace Hopper did not work for IBM - she was in the US navy.  I doubt that she 
>had
> anything to do with RPG.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Rob
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> 
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> 
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> 
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